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Good to Go

This morning, I did an 8K run on the treadmill, at my target race pace for Sunday’s Oakville Half Marathon. I chose to do it on the ‘mill even the weather outside was good, because I wanted to be able to focus on pace, cadence, and form, and to do it without the distractions provided by traffic lights, curbs, pedestrians, and the like. I like running on my treadmill, especially for things like this.

It was an even better session than I’d anticipated. It seems those hill repeat sessions and fartlek runs did the trick, as I felt stronger and smoother at a higher sustained pace than I’d been able to do previously. (Thanks and a tip of the barefoot hat to fellow dailymilers BarefootApe and Derek R for nudging me towards doing those sessions.) I ran this morning’s 8K in a time of 44:54, which meant a pace of 5:36. My average heart rate was 134 bpm, which was pretty good too. If I were to hold that pace for the full half marathon distance (21.1K), that would give me a finishing time of 1:56 and a few seconds, which would be a considerable improvement over my current PB for the half (2:03 and change).

That’s not to say that Sunday will play out that way, of course. A treadmill isn’t a road course, running in a crowd is very different from running solo, and 21.1K is much longer than 8K. Also, on Sunday I plan to park 3K away from the race start/finish, and run slowly and gently to the start. (And will, of course, have to run 3K back after the race is over.)

That said, I feel pretty good about this morning’s run. It went well, and I felt great doing it. Tomorrow, I’ll do an easy 5K, and I won’t run at all on Friday and Saturday.